Exploiting My Baby : A Blog by Teresa Strasser

My Childhood With Andre

I ask this question during my fourth go-round with the song, “Ghostbusters.” It’s playing in the industrial parking lot of a quaint Pennsylvania suburb where a group of elementary school children are having a Halloween parade. An amplifier is perched on a chair, an orange extension cord leading to a cute schoolhouse, complete with glimmering swing set.

Sure, it’s an industrial complex, but filled with holistic chiropractors and fancy personalized gyms. The children dutifully march in an oval, all being feverishly photographed by their parents. Siblings too young to be in school are clinging to their moms’ legs wearing ladybug costumes or puffy princess dresses.

The principal, dressed in an elaborate penguin suit, addresses the crowd and it starts again, tinny, cheerful: “If there’s something strange, in your neighborhood, who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!”

Well, there is something strange in this neighborhood, the fact that there is nothing strange in this neighborhood.

Bucks County, PA, at least from where I sit, is a world of gummy, removable pumpkin stickers for the sliding door to one’s giant manicured lawn. It’s a world of Halloween-themed puffy marshmallow ghost Peeps atop steaming cups of homemade hot chocolate in Number One Dad mugs. This is a Jack-o-lantern expertly carved with stencils world. Who you gonna call? Your neighbor to see if she and her toddler twins want to help decorate your witch cupcakes.

Back to me staring at this parade of children. I realize this town is a world of children, a world built around and for them, softer than a stack of Peeps on a heap of fall leaves. Later in the day, I will attend another parade to see my nephews march, both as Superman. My toddler will step in line with his own matching Superman suit, trailing his suburban cousins. This is my husband’s world, part of his childhood, whereas I grew up on the mean streets of San Francisco.

It’s not a saying, I mean, it is a saying, but the streets were kind of mean.

“If there’s something strange, in your neighborhood, who you gonna call?” Um, not the Popo, not where I grew up, because they’re busy scraping a body up off the corner in Hunters Point. You know what else was strange in my neighborhood? Child molesters. Yeah, I’m about to bum you out. Instead of the principal putting on a penguin suit, we had several assemblies every year during which we were warned not to follow anyone asking for help “finding lost puppies” or offering candy.

A guy once offered me a ride home from elementary school, leaning out of a rusty sedan, but I was so convinced my mom would never have arranged a ride for me I knew he was “something strange” and ran through an empty lot to my flat on a nearby hill, which I entered with a latch key. Looking back, this didn’t even merit telling my mom.

So, staring at the orange extension cord allowing the citizens of Bucks County to hear Ghostbusters as their adorable children made the rounds as Woody or Spiderman or Rapunzel, I asked myself, what’s so wrong with adults taking the day off, fitting themselves into a world of kids?

For reference, just know that when I was young, my dad took me to see the film, “My Dinner with Andre,” because he wanted to see it. The entire film consists of two guys talking philosophy over dinner, one of them played by Wally Shawn. I felt lucky to be included, because us city kids, we were just trying to fit into a world of grown-ups. Even if the films weren’t animated and we would never get a Wally Shawn action figure, we made due.

How could this type of life not be better? Or, am I just bitter? Maybe a Peep in my cocoa would have made me a happier person.

On the other hand, as I stare at the quiet streets (and duh, I get it, children get hurt here and everywhere, but you know what I mean) I wonder why it bothers me, just a tiny, teeny, weensy bit, that these kids are the center of the world. Striving and longing can’t live in a place like this. If they did, they would have a Beagle named Rascal and a $3,000 swing set.

Striving and longing breed symphonies and novels and vaccines and microprocessors, right? But maybe it’s okay for most of us to just be happy and serene. Maybe that’s my prayer for my own little Superman, to one day have a mid-level management job, a quiet mind, a decent dental plan and in his own worn mug, a slowly melting Peep.

My name is George and I'm curious: what's the point?

No, you have to reciprocate. Like it or not, there’s a kid pro quo.

Other parents helped you kill a Sunday afternoon with your toddler, throwing a pirate party, a princess party, a bubble party or whatever, and now it’s your turn. Or, I should say, it’s my turn. The first birthday I could get away with skipping, but now I have no choice. Like it or not, unless I feel like violating this unspoken contract with the other parents in my circle and at my day care, I am throwing a party for my son’s second birthday.

Let’s just say things aren’t off to a good start. Cancer is involved. I know. I’ll get to that.

First, my dream was to never throw an elaborate or expensive or exhausting birthday party for a child too young to care or even remember it. That dream was crushed, as I mentioned, by the social contract.

I decided the only course of action was to suck it up and pay one of these indoor playground places to host us. It goes like this: I throw them some cash, they provide plates and forks, a ball pit, air-conditioning, a giant slide, a bucket of juice boxes and the satisfaction of knowing I have not shirked my mom duties. Again, my child won’t care — that dude just made his first poop in the potty; like he cares if he gets a sheet cake from the grocery store or a chocolate ganache likeness of Thomas the Tank Engine from a bakery that sells $7 cupcakes. Like I said, these parties are payback for all the genuine fun and amusement I’ve had at the expense and inconvenience of other parents.

Now, how does cancer make its way into this story?

Two months in advance, I book the Saturday of his birthday. Plans are made, invitations (OK, e-vites, sorry) are sent, and what do you know? This indoor playground lets me know they double-booked my time slot. I’m out, the other family is in, here’s your deposit back, so long and farewell.

Obviously, there was nothing to do at this point but hang up the phone, get insanely upset, be fully aware that this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to anyone and also take a moment to ponder how horribly I’ve failed. All I had to do was throw a stupid party, like all the other moms do without incident. But I have no luck and no social graces, and this proves it. More self-flagellating to frost the teetering, tiered, rising cake of self-doubt.

Hell hath no fury like a toddler mom scorned. Let me tell you, my Yelp review was going to be none too kind. This is the only petty revenge I had for the horrible wrong this playground did me. They would pay. OK, this would be a waste of my time and probably have no effect on their business. And it would never answer the question: Why me? Why me and not the other family who booked the same time?

I fantasized about showing up at my time anyway. That would show them. They would have dueling parties and perhaps a fire hazard. They had my deposit, and I would have my party, on my day, at my time, their mistake.

That’s when the owner called, the mother of a girl a year older than my son. She said she was sorry, that this had never happened before, that she started the party playground to help busy moms, to make things amazing and memorable for the kids, to give herself something meaningful to do after she was diagnosed with cancer. That’s right, and that’s when I cried. And she cried. And she said things had fallen through the cracks since her treatment and her sister had stepped in to help out.

She offered me the 10 a.m. spot. Mimosas would be nice, she said. I could serve bagels. They would throw in some balloons and an extra hour for my trouble.

There are times when the universe goes, “Here’s your gift bag.” And you open it to find something more lasting than a painted face or a Curious George sticker. The theme of my son’s party this year is obvious. Perspective.

“Desitin in my cuticles” is not the first line of a poignant country song, but I keep thinking it should be.

No. Desitin in my cuticles is what concerns me when I’m asked the question I get at least once a day: “Are you having another one?”

Really, this should not be an annoying question.

It’s a perfectly normal way for you to take an interest in my family and in me, and I don’t mind it. In fact, I mind people who mind it. Moms of babies or toddlers who get twisted when asked if they plan on having another are like the women who wore “Touch the Bump, Get a Thump” t-shirts when they were pregnant. A human growing inside your stomach is compelling, and no t-shirt is going to change that. Similarly, when strangers or relatives see your baby hitting milestones, getting out of the crib and diapers, it is totally normal to ask if you will do this whole thing again.

What they are really asking–and the reason why this is a tough question to answer is, “Does this whole kid thing ruin your life, or did it work for you?” For me, both things are true.

I mean this with tremendous love and no regret; my life, as I knew it, is over. There will always be a part of me worrying about my child, whether he’s at daycare or camp or college or on his honeymoon. So, I feel vulnerable in a way I never was before. It’s terrifying, all this love and these high stakes. But, ruined is too strong a word, especially for something that can be so euphoric.

On that front, having another kid is sort of neutral because I am already in the game. How much harder can it be? Probably a lot. When I look at the infant toys now collecting cobwebs in the garage, a part of me never wants to go back. Just eye-balling that stupid, red baby play mat with cheap plastic mirrors and crinkly fabric birds and recalling “tummy time” or the washing of various breast pump parts makes me want to donate every single baby thing I own to the Salvation Army and say “Night, night” to ever reproducing again.

It’s an inexplicable thrill ride to watch my two year-old suddenly string a sentence together or count to ten (even if he does throw in “three” where it doesn’t belong). At the same time, there’s a part of me that exhales when certain stages are over. When he gave up the pacifier, I thought, “Thank you. Thank you. No more scrambling for fallen pacifiers to wash. No more stuffing them in my glove compartment. No more.” And a whisper in my head added, “Unless you have another one.” Which explains the jar of pacifiers in a cupboard somewhere. I’m in baby purgatory, with a jar of pacifiers in one hand and a birth control pill in the other.

Most couples I see with two young children look pretty miserable. Or maybe I’m just seeing that because I’m scared. A big part of me wants to do it again, this time knowing how to take a temperature rectally and how to swaddle and not being so terrified and just taking in the joyful parts. Part of me wants a do-over, a second chance to live the peak moment of having a new baby, only without all the paranoia, the inexperience.

Each night, when I put on my toddler’s pajamas and diaper, I cover his little bum with Desitin and there it is, the white paste that clings to your cuticles with the adhesive power of ten thousand barnacles. I can attack it with a towel, or go at it with a wet wipe, but that stuff is powerfully sticky. And I wonder if I’ll miss it.

* This piece originally appeared in print via Creator’s Syndicate and online at the Huffington Post.